Purpose: This paper aims to discuss how trade union leaders deal with the implementation of Industry 4.0 (I4.0). The study is circumscribed to the Brazilian automotive sector and came from a human-centric (Industry 5.0) concern related to issues such as organisational learning, knowledge, innovation and workplace learning.…

As life course research has long recognized, work and careers are what Pearlin (1988; p.259) describes as "durable arrangements" that serve to "organize experience over time." However, understanding (a) the specific impacts of the alienations and contradictions of work and society under capitalism as well as (b) the analytic…

This report explores the links between trade unions and workplace training, and the potential benefits of social partnership in the skills system. The UK is relatively unusual in having no formal role for trade unions in the training system. In most advanced economies, trade unions and employers work alongside government in shaping the skills…

In order to boost learning, recent UK governments have invested in trade union-led workplace learning. Investing in the supply of learning is useful but ignores the demand for learning by workers, about which there is little research. This paper addresses this lacunae by analysing worker demand for learning, which workers want learning, what…

This study grew out of the realization that implicit literacy expectations between working class United Auto Workers (UAW) staff and professional class staff were complicating the filling out and filing of a position audit form. Professional class supervisors had designed the form as a measure of fairness, in that each UAW employee on campus was…